


Ferelden Fury

by stitchcasual



Category: Dragon Age II, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Drift Compatibility, M/M, Minor Character Death, look i just really love drift compatibility as a Thing ok??, mostly canon-typical jaeger violence, over-the-top drift metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23075494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchcasual/pseuds/stitchcasual
Summary: Hawke left the jaeger program years ago, after Aveline dropped out and Bethany lost Carver. He didn't think he'd ever pilot again, but when Marshall Rutherford approaches him with a last-ditch effort, one final push to drive out the darkspawn for good, he accepts...as long as they can find him a copilot.
Relationships: Fenris/Male Hawke
Comments: 19
Kudos: 45





	Ferelden Fury

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired from [this prompt](https://dapromptexchange.tumblr.com/post/172611681659/hawke-is-secretly-scared-of-being-matched-in-the) on tumblr! 
> 
> Fic originally posted in [serial installments](https://stitchcasual.tumblr.com/post/173818639369/ferelden-fury-a-da2pacrim-au-hawkes-been-a) on my tumblr
> 
> complete with [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0eBOehafSgem0raankYZwo?si=jDsWcCocT6iy7ps1efznfA):  
> "Hurricane" - from Hamilton  
> "The War Within" - Churchill  
> "Eye of the Storm" - X Ambassadors  
> "I Am" - Koethe  
> "Nothing Else Matters" - Metallica

Hawke’s been a jaeger pilot before; he’d matched with Aveline, a friend from the old days in Ferelden. They’d been in the army together, fought together in the petty, human conflicts that happened before. And then the darkspawn came and they hit Ferelden first, coming out of a rift in the Korcari Wilds. Hawke and Aveline had both volunteered to be among the first pilots of the jaeger program in order to defend their homeland. They’d left the army and the service of their king to defend the rest of the world from the darkspawn threat. Their jaeger had been decommissioned after a few years, after Aveline’s husband died and her drift with Hawke became unstable.

Five years since then and the darkspawn hadn’t stopped coming, had only gotten bigger and badder and cost more to fight, both in terms of civilian casualty numbers and in the gold pieces it took to commission and maintain the jaegers. After he stopped piloting, he’d been in the control room for others, guiding them through drops and fights until he couldn’t anymore.

But what they’re asking of him now…

“You want me to pilot again?”

Marshall Rutherford grimaces, apologetic but not backing down. “We might not have another chance to drive them off, Hawke. The Council has decided that the jaeger program is to be terminated in favor of the sea wall.”

Hawke blinks and looks around the two of them at the construction site. Building the wall in Kirkwall hasn’t been the most lucrative of jobs Hawke’s ever had, but it’s alright. Pays most of the bills. Makes people feel safe, kind of like being a jaeger pilot had. And it keeps him busy so he doesn’t have to think about Lothering. Bethany’s up there as well, higher on the wall, working out her problems too. She’s got a lot more of them than he does, considering. 

Rutherford has the good grace to look chagrined. “I realize what I’m asking of you.”

“Are you asking her, too?” Hawke jerks his chin upward and leans against an I-beam, crossing his arms. “Hell of a better pilot than I ever was.” 

“Yes. I just…found you first.”

Hawke and Bethany have a long talk that evening, argue about it and talk things over, and in the morning both of them report to the airstrip where Rutherford and his men are waiting to take off. Bethany takes charge of the search for a new pilot for Hawke, interviewing dozens of potentials and weeding out the ones he’s unlikely to drift with. It’s a rough job. He doesn’t envy her it. Aside from Bethany, he knows himself best and knows he’s prickly, standoffish, hard to get along with, off putting in most circumstances, and blunt to a fault. He doesn’t drift well with others. Aveline had been easy to drift with, though: she brought nothing but her sterling work ethic to the neural handshake. She was a blank slate, probably could have drifted with anyone, but she chose Hawke. And just as well, really; there weren’t any other people in their program at the time interested in even attempting to drift with him.

Bethany tells him he has a week before the candidates will be put through their compatibility tests with him. She and Marshall Rutherford comb the depths of the reserves, or so she tells Hawke one evening over dinner, and have even put out calls to first-time pilots, people interested in the jaeger program who’ve never drifted before. It’s not reassuring.

Hawke spends most of his time training by himself in a corner of the gym or down with the jaegers, helping out with repairs where he can. He can’t do a lot, he’d been a pilot after all, but he knows some basics and he can hold a welding torch and follow instructions. It’s something to do, anyway.

“What about you?” Hawke asks at lunch, two days before compatibility testing. “Who’s your copilot going to be?” 

Bethany drops her eyes to the food on her plate, scooting it around with her fork. “I…might just stay up in the control room. Watch out for you there. Marshall Rutherford says I have a real head for logistics.”

Hawke nods and presses his lips together. “You know we always did better when you and Carver were there to watch our back.”

“I know, I just… I can hardly look at a jaeger anymore, Garrett. I thought it had been long enough, that I was over it, but I guess this isn’t something that just goes away.” She smiles sadly at Hawke, and he watches a tear fall down her cheek. His fork clatters to the tray and he reaches out to grab her hand with both of his.

“I know you’ll always have my back,” he says, squeezing her hand. “No matter how far away.”

Testing day has a sense of urgency Hawke could really do without. The countdown clock anticipates another darkspawn event within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and the base at Skyhold only has a few functioning jaegers with pilot teams. He imagines Rutherford wants another in place before the darkspawn come through, but looking at the people arrayed before him, Hawke’s not sure that’s going to happen. The assembled candidates are of all stripes, tall and short, lanky and stocky, dark and light, but half of them don’t meet his eyes when he looks at them, and the half that do can’t hold his gaze for very long. He feels nothing from any of them, but he gestures at Bethany for her to proceed anyway.

Fifteen failed candidates later, Hawke stands in the middle of the sparring ring and shrugs at his sister, who frowns at her paperwork. Not a single one of his opponents had come close to the kind of dance he expected from a drift partner when they sparred. Tired as he got after the hours they spent in this room and still no one could best him.

“There should be one more,” Bethany says, flipping a few pages and squinting at her handwriting. “Transfer from Tevinter.” She does some quick calculations in her head. “That flight would have only arrived this morning, so by the time he got fed and assigned a room… I may have to send someone to see if he’s awake.”

The door to the room closes with a quiet click, and Hawke whirls to face a man he’s never seen before. Short and wiry, he looks like he’s built for speed but the density of the muscle underneath his shirt speaks a different story. White hair, long down the middle but short on the sides, is bound up in a loose half-bun, half-ponytail, and white tattoos snake down the length of his throat and arms. 

“I apologize. That won’t be necessary.” 

The low voice sends shivers through Hawke’s limbs, and when the man takes a few more steps forward into the training area, Hawke catches his eyes. Green eyes, intense in color but mild in expression, blink back at him, and Hawke has to look away after a minute or he fears his whole body will go numb.

“Ah, Fenris. So glad you made it. Please help yourself to a staff and join Hawke in the ring.” Bethany smiles, and Fenris bows his head in response, making his way over to the racks on the side of the room. He weighs a few staves before selecting one and twirls it experimentally as he walks toward Hawke. And then he stops, weight settled evenly as he crouches, the staff held straight back at his side. And he waits, watching Hawke.

Hawke flips his staff, holds it crossbody pointed down, and shifts onto his forward foot. He evaluates Fenris, taking in his stance, his hold on the staff, the set of his face. And then he attacks.

He takes three steps forward and swings his staff up toward Fenris’s hip, an easy enough blow to deflect, aimed as it is toward where Fenris holds his staff back. And Fenris knows it too, judging by the offended look on his face. Hawke has a second of amusement and then he’s swinging his staff back up to parry Fenris’s as the butt end flies on a collision course for his face. He backs up a step, giving ground, and Fenris takes it like he knew Hawke would move.

Their staffs crack together as Hawke stays on the defensive, letting Fenis push him back again and again until his foot nearly edges off the mat when he sets it down. Then he ducks and darts forward, poking his staff between Fenris’s leg and pulling, the combined weight of his body and pressure on Fenris’s ankle toppling the smaller man to his back.

“One, zero,” Bethany calls from the sideline. Hawke can hear the excitement in her voice. She’s trying not to show it, but he knows she thinks this one is it. He’s not sure. Other than the bit at the beginning, he hasn’t seen anything truly remarkable about this guy compared to all the others. He’s looking forward to the shower after this, and maybe Rutherford has a spot up in the control room for him too. His brain has all but checked out from this fight, trusting his body to make it through for the both of them, until he lets Fenris off the ground.

In short order, he’s facedown on the mat, Fenris sitting on his back, a staff held uncomfortably close to his neck so his head has to crane back or cut off his airflow. Some scratching of pen on paper from the sideline and Bethany, sounding tired, says, “One, one.” Not his best performance, for sure.

Fenris removes himself from Hawke’s back quickly, taking up a ready stance a few steps away. He looks…disappointed? Fair, Hawke supposes, considering his own thoughts earlier, but his head violently disagrees, lighting a fire inside him, desperate that he prove himself better. He breathes deep, pulling his brain back from its premature vacation, and mirrors Fenris’s posture.

The next point goes to Fenris as well, but it’s a closer thing. They're more in sync during this match, their staffs seeming to just follow each other, only tapping lightly before they're in motion again, blurring as they move. Hawke reacts on instincts alone as he attacks and defends, barely seeing what's happening as he whips the staff up and back and down to counter Fenris. That's what gets him in the end: his eyes unfocus as he backs up a step, and he doesn't quite see Fenris ducking under his guard to flip him up and over his shoulder and unceremoniously onto the mat. When he looks up, it's to see the barest hint of a smile on Fenris’s face as he extends a hand to help Hawke to his feet.

“One, two.” Bethany sounds smug. Hawke rolls his eyes but gives Fenris a nod as he settles into a wide stance, holding his staff like a baseball bat. Fenris barely reacts, but he doesn't look disappointed anymore.

They trade points, Hawke gets two, then three, then Fenris gets three. The match for point four is protracted, a dance that takes them to all corners of the mat, both of them giving and taking ground in equal measure. Hawke relaxes into it and he knows, knows for a certainty, that the two of them are drift compatible. He hasn’t had a fight like this since he last sparred with Aveline. He and Fenris are one person by the time the fight ends, one body with four arms, four legs, two heads, and one mind. Their staffs, true mirrors of each other, both stop mere centimeters from the other’s neck, and Hawke can feel the grin on Fenris’s face lifting the corners of his own mouth as Bethany calls out, “Four…four?”

In unison, Hawke and Fenris set the butts of their staffs on the ground and bow, first to each other, then to Rutherford and Bethany. Hawke knows he doesn’t have to say anything; Bethany can see it on his face, see the brightness in his eyes, and even a blind man would have heard the way they moved together during the last round and understood what it meant. She looks happy for maybe the first time since Lothering, smiling like a burden has been lifted from her. And in a way it has, he supposes: she’s no longer responsible for finding him someone to drift with, though the true test will be when they hop into whichever jaeger is to be theirs and initiate the first neural handshake. It’s a strong bond already though, and when Hawke looks over at Fenris, it’s to see Fenris looking back at him.

Hawke hasn’t stopped smiling since the match ended, but when he glances up at Rutherford next to Bethany, the grin slowly fades from his face. The Marshall doesn’t look pleased. He looks dismayed and vaguely sick, like he’s tasted something sour and can’t spit it out. Bethany touches his arm gently, leaning over in concern.

“Marshall?”

“No.” Rutherford’s voice is ice, and Hawke feels its chill creep up his limbs. He wants to glance toward Fenris again but he feels frozen in place.

“There must be another candidate. I understand the lengths you went to for these trials, Bethany, but I must insist you keep looking.”

“But…why?” Bethany sweeps an arm at Hawke and Fenris, stiff and unmoving in their mirrored posture. “They’re practically perfect, the best we’ve seen all day, and with all due respect, sir, I know my brother, and it’s always been difficult to match him up with someone. I don’t understand why we’re throwing away this win.”

“First, because you circumvented my express desire to source a pilot from Ferelden or the Marches and brought in this transfer yourself.” Rutherford straightens and stares at Bethany, who blinks back at him calmly. Those two are nearly of a height, so Rutherford puffing himself up doesn’t do a lot to add to his stature compared to Hawke’s sister who’s been nearly impervious to that kind of intimidation her entire life.

“I brought in the best talent,” she says, “the ones with the best _chance_ at drifting with my brother. Why’d you ask him to pilot if you’re going to lay stipulations on who his copilot can be?”

“ _Second,_ ” Rutherford continues, ignoring Bethany, “because he’s _Tevinter._ I cannot and will not allow a Tevinter spy to infiltrate us when we are at such a crucial moment against the darkspawn. Did you know he was one of the pilots of the Blood Magister four years ago when it side-swiped one of the Orlesian jaegers off Amaranthine? They left its pilots exposed to the darkspawn, and only after the pilots were dead did the Magister enter the fight. So no, I don’t care how well he drifts with Hawke. He’s not piloting one of my jaegers.”

Beside Hawke, Fenris shakes, has been shaking since Rutherford’s accusation of his race. Hawke feels it more than sees it, his eyes still fixed on Rutherford. But he sees the tip of Fenris’s staff as it clatters to the mat with dull thwacks and hears Fenris’s light footfalls as they leave the room. The ice that had frozen Hawke in place shatters as soon as the door closes behind Fenris, and he takes two steps toward Rutherford.

“That’s. My. Copilot,” he growls, jabbing a finger at the Marshall, then spins on his heel and hustles after Fenris.

Hawke can hear Bethany start to argue with Rutherford behind him as he yanks the door open and looks down the hallways. Fenris isn’t immediately visible, and Hawke grabs the nearest passing personnel who points him down the hallway leading most directly to the barracks. He runs. People scatter in front of him, a 6’2 wrecking ball of a man that no one wants to challenge, and he skids around the corner to the living quarters wing in time to see white hair disappear behind one of the doors.

“Fenris!” He pounds his fist on the door, three, six, fifteen times before it opens and he nearly punches Fenris in the face. But their time on the mat wasn’t for nothing and something in his brain trips as soon as he sees Fenris and he pulls his hand back in time.

“Fenris.”

Fenris doesn’t move from the opening he’s created, just keeps one hand on the door and one on the jamb and raises his dark eyebrows at Hawke. The hair that had been pulled back while they sparred is loose around one side of his face, hanging down to his collarbone, and Hawke has to fight the stupidly strong urge to reach out and run his fingers through it. Behind Fenris in the room is a single, small bag on the bed, still packed. He hadn’t even had time to try and settle in before coming to the trials, and now Rutherford is trying to run him off.

“Yes?”

Now’s the moment his brain chooses to realize that Fenris is shirtless, the fabric dangling from the hand resting against the door jamb. A fuse short circuits somewhere in the “reasonable human behavior” part of his mind as he sees the tattoos that climb Fenris’s arms also snake around his chest and, Maker, down past the low-hanging exercise pants on his hips. 

“Uuh…” The wounded look that passes through Fenris’s eyes jumpstarts Hawke’s higher functions, and he clears his throat, deliberately lifting his gaze to meet Fenris’s. “Look, I don’t care what Rutherford said. You’re it. We’re drift compatible. I know you felt it too.”

Fenris blinks and looks away. “Did you not hear the Marshall’s story? It would be better if I left, if I had not come at all.”

“Oh, I heard,” Hawke says, and Fenris’s head lowers. “I just don’t give a shit.” In front of him, Fenris jerks like he’s been hit and stares up at Hawke, head cocked, eyebrows drawn together. It would be cute if the situation were less serious. Well, it’s cute regardless, but now’s not the time to stick his finger in the creases forming on Fenris’s forehead.

“Well, maybe a little bit of a shit? But definitely not enough to rule you out as my copilot. That was a shitty thing, yeah, but you’re here now, right? So you’re different. That was four years ago. You don’t feel evil or malicious to me.”

A beat of silence passes between them before Fenris shakes his head and turns from the door, pushing it closed. Hawke sticks his arm in before it shuts fully, grimacing as his forearm is pinched by the metal. Fenris turns, his shirt half back over his head, and rolls his eyes as Hawke rubs his arm and enters the room, closing the door behind him.

“You are persistent.”

“Yeah, sorry. But come on, you can’t throw this away just because the Marshall’s being ridiculous. There’s something here.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Then stay and give me a chance to.” Hawke crosses the room to sit on the bed, holding his hand over the bag that contains all of Fenris’s possessions before Fenris can reach for it. Fenris scowls, and Hawke holds up his other hand to ask for more time. Fenris’s arms cross tight over his chest, and he circles one finger to tell Hawke to get on with it.

“Okay, look, I don’t match with people. I just don’t. And I never thought I’d get back into a jaeger, but this feels different. And I want to see where we can take this, I want to kick some darkspawn ass, but I’m only doing it with you. I don’t care what the Marshall said, I don’t care what you did four years ago. I care who you are now and what you bring to the drift. Besides…” Hawke lifts his hand from the bag and leans back, raising an eyebrow. “It’s the end of the world. Where are you gonna go?

“At least get in the jaeger with me. I know a guy in the control room; he’d run the test program for us. And if it doesn’t work out, if we can’t drift, you can run off to wherever you think isn’t gonna get overrun with darkspawn in the next few months after Skyhold goes down fighting.”

Fenris worries at the corner of his lower lip, his eyes darting between Hawke’s feet dangling off the bed, his bag, and the door. Finally he sighs and shrugs his shoulders. Hawke scrambles off the bed, grinning the whole way to the control room, and Fenris follows, still folded in on himself.

Inside the hemispherical control room it’s a flurry of activity, and Fenris has to stick close to Hawke’s wake as he wades through the scores of people. There are stations for monitoring the rift in the Korcari Wilds, predictive models scrolling through data, security camera footage from all over the world, and outside the glass dome of the exterior walls, you can see the jaegers. There’s an Orlesian model, one of the newer ones, looks frilly but still gets the job done. The next one has to be from the Marches, but only because it’s difficult to pin a place of origin on the various pieces cobbled together. Marcher jaegers always look like they arose sentient from a junkyard. The third is some sort of Rivaini/Antivan hybrid, sleek and pared down. And, backed into a corner out of the way, only visible if you were studying the yard, a Ferelden rig, stocky and built for punishment. The Fereldens had always designed their jaegers after their dogs, like a tank but with deceptive grace.

Hawke stops moving at a console right up next to the glass, tapping the shoulder of the short, blond man seated there. Their conversation is short, both of them grinning entirely too wide for anyone’s health, and then Hawke claps his hands together and heads back for the door, calling over his shoulder, “Thanks, Varric! I owe you one.”

“At least three, Hawke! I’ve been keeping track.”

Hawke just waves without looking back and keeps walking, and Fenris falls back behind him like they’d choreographed it. They emerge into the launch yard at the feet of the jaegers, and Hawke looks up at all of them with love and wonder writ large on his face. But then he turns for the jaeger in the corner, the old Ferelden model, and something changes. It’s still love, but it’s bittersweet, and there’s dread creeping through the wonder. He doesn’t speak until they’re at the base of the giant robot, craning their necks to look up its heights.

“This is the Fury,” he says, his voice nearly a whisper. “Mine, and Aveline’s, when we first joined. Gave her to Bethany and Carver when they joined and we got upgraded.” He clears his throat, scratches at his cheek. “Guess she’s mine again.”

Fenris lays a hand on Hawke’s arm, the touch just barely there, and Hawke turns a crooked smile on him before it fades.

“Come on, before the Marshall figures out we’re here.”

They take the elevator up and enter the locker room where all the pilots’ equipment is kept. Someone, probably Varric, has replaced his old suit with one of the newer kind. Part of him wishes they’d left it, let him keep wearing it, but it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t have that extra reminder of Carver as he suits up. The two of them had looked almost like twins standing side by side in those old suits. There’s a picture of it somewhere; Bethany probably has it now. He moves on autopilot donning the suit and walking out to the cockpit of the jaeger, focusing his attention on the little things, like the new way the shoulder plates snap together and the polished interior of the Fury, so different than the last time he was in here. Anything but the last time he saw the Fury out on assignment.

He stands next to the cradle on the left, evening his breaths and preparing for the drift. And avoiding looking at the right cradle until Fenris steps up to it.

“You don’t mind if I… I can’t take that one anymore.”

He used to pilot on the right. So did Carver.

“It is fine.” Fenris regards him curiously, though his tone carries none of it.

“Guess we’re about to know each other better,” Hawke says and punches the intercom to the control room. “Varric, stand by for trial run.”

“Standing by. You’ve got about ten minutes until they figure it out and get up here, Hawke. Make good use of it.”

Hawke and Fenris nod at each other and move simultaneously to connect to the cradles. The Fury’s systems are familiar to Hawke, so he punches up the reserve power, enough for a trial run and not much else.

“Initiating neural handshake in three,” Varric’s voice says, “Two...one…”

And then they're in the drift.

Memories emerge and merge, twisting around each other in the once-familiar smoke-and-water landscape of the drift: Bethany and Carver as little kids, running figure-eights around Hawke and their father; two children Hawke doesn’t know sitting quietly and sharing a coloring book page; Hawke’s mother baking in the kitchen; images of a tall, smiling man, graying somewhat prematurely, his hand extended; Hawke’s hand on Carver’s shoulder as their mother and sister hug each other and sob quietly; the same gray-haired man, his voice raised in anger then abruptly soft.

Drifting with Aveline had been like standing in the eye of a hurricane, around them all the violence and rage Hawke brought while Aveline grounded Hawke’s passions so they could be used with deadly precision against the darkspawn. 

And at first with Fenris it feels almost the same, like he’s somehow managed to find the only other person in Thedas who could serve as the lightning rod to his storm. He can hear Varric letting them know they’ve made the connection, to go ahead and run the Fury through her paces. So he drops down into that mental place he remembers from past experience, where the memories can pulse by him but he won’t be dragged into their current. 

His physical body looks over at Fenris who looks back at him, and they settle into a fighting stance, bringing up the Fury’s fists. There isn’t anything he needs to tell Fenris; it doesn't matter that this routine isn’t one that he’s familiar with. Hawke knows it, so Fenris knows it, and the Fury’s right fist punches forward then pulls back to its starting stance. Uppercut with the left, then they bring the Fury’s hands down to her hips, resting for a moment before running through the same movements again.

They’re faster and smoother this time, and Hawke grins, exultant. He’d known Fenris was it when they fought, could feel the compatibility the longer they sparred, and this just confirms it. But years of combat are powerful too, and he looks to his left from force of habit to share his high spirits…and sees the wall of the cockpit, instruments pulsing with light. The force of another memory hits him, and—

“Hawke! You’re out of alignment!”

—when he looks back to the right, Carver is there. He’s sweating under his helmet, grunting with exertion as they match the metal alloy of the jaeger’s strength against the darkspawn’s sheer mass. They’re losing too, giving ground until Carver buries their right foot in the dust and dirt and Hawke reaches down to snap off part of the bridge that connects Lothering to Ostagar, swinging it at the darkspawn’s head. That buys them time to better prepare for the darkspawn’s next furious assault, and they’re able to drive it back, away from the town. The darkspawn is dying and getting desperate, clawing over and over again at anything it can reach. And it gets lucky, catching the lip of a gouge it had made earlier and tearing the Fury’s right arm in two, from elbow to wrist. Carver screams. His arm dangles loosely at his side, and the darkspawn seizes its opportunity, surging forward to rip its teeth into the sundered metal, driving the jaeger to its back. Hawke swings with the left arm, punching as best he can at the darkspawn as it wrecks its way up the jaeger’s body. He can feel numbness in his own right arm but not the searing pain Carver gets through his connection to the right hemisphere of the jaeger.

The darkspawn reaches the head, claws puncturing the cockpit, and Carver turns to Hawke. “Bethany, I—”

Hawke snaps back into himself to hear the warning klaxons around them. “I’m okay!” he shouts into the comms, checking the instruments in front of him.

“That’s great!” Varric yells back. “Fenris isn’t!”

To his right, Fenris is standing in the slack position of someone lost in the drift, arms at his side, head tilted forward, hunched over. Hawke leans over toward him, as far as the harness will let him go.

“Hey, hey, Fenris! Stay with me, come back up. They’re just memories; they’re not real!”

The Fury shudders, and Hawke feels a tidal wave crashing down on him. He has a moment to think frantically that this isn’t like drifting with Aveline at all, before he’s dragged into a whirlpool of memories that don’t belong to him. Turns out drifting with Fenris is more like trying to layer two storms onto each other while the winds whip in opposite directions, pushing against everything in an attempt to protect the silent center from intrusions. 

When the waters settle enough that he can see where he is, he’s still in a jaeger but it’s not the Fury: the instruments are all wrong, out of place and tinted red. To his left is the graying man from earlier memories, flipping switches in preparation for the drop. Hawke can feel dread pooling in the pit of his stomach though the scene is innocuous, the routine every pilot goes through before a mission. An arm reaches out in front of him to press its own buttons, and Hawke startles to see the arm of the suit covered in a mirror image of the tattoos on Fenris’s skin. He steps to the right and watches Fenris complete his side of the pre-drop prep, half a step behind the other man. Fenris doesn’t respond to any of the control room’s questions; all of that is handled by Danarius, a name Hawke feels more than knows as he’s carried along by Fenris’s memory. 

The drop happens, the jaeger strides out, and Hawke walks all around this memory jaeger, trying to figure out why this is the memory that’s trapped Fenris. Then he recognizes the coastline. They’re off Amaranthine. The Orlesian jaeger, the Wicked Heart, walks beside them. Occasionally the comm buzzes with status updates: the darkspawn was sighted near here but seems to have left the area; they’re getting reports of it farther down the coast; it seems to be coming to them.

Hawke watches as Danarius gives an order and Fenris frowns, hesitating. He watches pain wrack Fenris’s face as Danarius snarls, watches the conflict play over his features even after he nods his acceptance and the jaeger turns abruptly, smashing into the Heart, tearing her chest open, leaving her cockpit cracked, her power cells ruptured.

Hawke watches as Fenris moves, puppet like, barely piloting, eyes wide and haunted as the screams of the Orlesian pilots come through the comm. He watches Fenris come more alive as the darkspawn shifts its attention to them, watches the rage on his face transfer into his fighting, watches the darkspawn fall. Through the drift, Hawke can feel the maelstrom of Fenris’s emotions: anger, frustration, helplessness, and over all that, sadness and keen betrayal. He reels at the force of it all, bracing himself against a bulkhead.

“Fenris!” he calls again. “Please. Come back.”

The drift flickers around them, the reflections interrupted, and Hawke’s eyes dart back and forth, searching for the source. In the memory, he watches as Fenris reaches up toward his helmet, and then all he sees is the Fury, her instruments and cockpit. 

“Report to my office.” The Marshall's voice. Quiet, so Hawke knows he's furious and trying to keep it wrapped up around the staff, which is the worst kind of furious. The one where he just yells at you is nice because it gets things out of the way quickly, three minutes and it's over. The quiet one builds and gets worse and by the time you're in his office, you wish you'd just walked off base instead. Hawke's had plenty of both in the years he was a pilot and even after he traded piloting for coordinating operations. He was expecting this one too, and yet he's more disappointed than he thought he'd be. He'd hoped that he and Fenris would click immediately, that their first drift would show Rutherford how wrong he was to not let them partner. Instead, he feels like he handed the Marshall all the ammunition he needs to execute them both.

Fenris is still slack and unmoving beside him, and Hawke disconnects, rushing around to trigger the releases and pull Fenris out. He tugs the helmet from Fenris’s head, tapping his face until those vivid green eyes focus again. Hawke offers the most charming smile he can muster, which isn't much, considering.

“We're in trouble.”

* * *

Marshall Rutherford paces behind his desk. Hawke stands at attention, but his eyes follow the Marshall to and fro; Fenris is stiff beside him, staring at his toes. They've been like this for several minutes, and if it goes on much longer, Rutherford will wear a rut in the tile.

He pauses, finally, behind his desk, spreading his hands on its surface, and stares back at Hawke.

“What do you think you were doing?” Still quiet, still a lid on his temper.

“Trial run, sir. Exactly what it looked like.”

“What part about ‘he’s not piloting one of my jaegers’ did you not understand?”

“Technically, I understood every word you said. What I don't understand is why you're keeping my only drift compatible pilot from helping us save the world.” Hawke drops from attention to a sloppy parade rest. He's already in trouble; a bit of insubordination won't really hurt him. Rutherford’s eyes narrow but he doesn’t say anything about it, which means he’s way more wound up about a Tevinter in a Ferelden jaeger than Hawke had originally imagined.

“We’re up against a wall, Marshall. We need every jaeger we can get. The darkspawn aren’t going to wait forever for us to find a replacement pilot for me. It’s kind of them to have held off this long, but that just means the next attack is going to be sooner rather than later.”

“You think perhaps I am unaware of that, Hawke?” Rutherford sweeps an arm at his desk before gesturing out to the war clock in the jaeger yard, and Hawke realizes there’s a miniature version dead center on the desk’s surface, placed so Rutherford can’t help but be confronted by the ticking numbers any time he sits down. That still doesn’t explain it though.

“No, but you do seem to be laboring under some sort of delusion about my drifting capabilities. You’re still thinking there must be someone we’ve overlooked, that I can’t possibly be that hard to match with. Give my sister some credit, won’t you? She pulled everyone with even the smallest possibility. Now, unless you can produce Aveline Vallen from somewhere and tell me she’s willing to step into a jaeger again, Fenris is it. He’s the best shot we have, the _only_ shot we have. Like it or not.”

A full minute passes as the Marshall looks between Hawke and Fenris. He folds his arms across his chest and exhales slowly before speaking. “This is my base. Like it or not, Hawke, Fenris will not be piloting with you. You are both dismissed.

“Fenris. I will not expel you from Skyhold, but you are confined to the living quarters unless in the presence of security personnel. I cannot run the risk.”

Fenris nods sharply and turns on his heel, marching out of Rutherford’s office without a word in his own defense. After a moment staring at the Marshall, Hawke follows, rushing to catch up. He's a second away from opening his mouth when the darkspawn sirens go off. They both pull up short in the hallway, Fenris looking back at Hawke as Hawke reaches a hand out for him. 

“What—”

“Darkspawn. Come on.”

A bare second’s hesitation, then Fenris takes Hawke’s hand and lets himself be pulled down the halls.

“We’re going to the control room,” Hawke says, answering the question he could feel brewing from Fenris as he rounds the final corner. “Marshall may have grounded us, but I can still help.”

“And me? I am not useful outside of a jaeger.”

Hawke stops outside the control room door, drawing Fenris to the side so personnel can still move in and out unobstructed. “One, there’s no way that’s true. Two, I’m not running all the way to living quarters to get you if it turns out we’re needed. Stay right by me and you’ll be fine.” He grins and squeezes Fenris’s hand, and they join the contained chaos of the control room.

Bethany’s at a console near the back, coordinating pre-drop checks on the jaegers. She raises her eyebrows as Hawke and Fenris enter, but she just points up to the front, near Varric’s station and the window, where the pilots for the other jaegers have gathered, already suited up. Hawke remembers the days of living near his suit, just waiting for the alarms to sound. A pang of loss runs through him, and he grinds his teeth. He’d thought after all these years he’d be over it, but the rush of constantly living that close to the line of death is an addiction he can’t shake that easy. 

Fenris squeezes his hand and gives Hawke a small, tight-lipped smile when he shakes out of his thoughts and looks over. There’s understanding in those green eyes, and Hawke closes his eyes, nodding in acknowledgment. If nothing else, he supposes, if they’re never allowed inside a jaeger together again, if Fenris leaves Skyhold after this, at least he had the chance to make another connection with someone who understands him on a level unmatched by anything else. It’s something he never thought he’d have again after Aveline. Just his luck that they’re all about to die.

Marshall Rutherford strides into the control room from a door near the front as Hawke and Fenris make it to the back of the assembled pilots. The Orlesian pilots are conspicuous for their facial hair: Hawke’s always been a little in awe of the mustache Stroud manages to keep perfectly groomed, and his partner, Riordan, though in possession of a full beard, has it trimmed and detailed so it looks like the only natural way to have a beard. It makes Hawke a little self-conscious of his own, which has a tendency to curl and stick out at his chin. He rubs at it, absently smoothing down the hair.

The Antivan and Rivaini pilots spend most of their time joking with anyone they can, elbowing each other in the side with every ribald remark. It’s usually thanks to them that the atmosphere in the control room is less stretched and tense than it by rights should be. They both look supremely unconcerned with the current situation, slouching where they stand, arms loosely crossed except to gesture widely (and elbow each other). They don’t even look at the clock, which most people unconsciously glance at every few moments. The Antivan, Zevran, has two curling tattoos beside his left eye, highlighting the wicked glint that appears there more often than not. He’s golden and beautiful and unashamed of anything…and has propositioned Hawke on more than one occasion. Isabela, the Rivaini, encouraged that, as she does everything with Zevran, even though half the base is convinced that they’re in a relationship together. Her curly dark hair is cropped short around her ears, giving her a cute, impish look that she definitely deserves as she catches sight of Hawke and Fenris and wiggles her fingers at them, raking her eyes up and down Fenris’s form. Hawke scowls at her, but Fenris just looks amused.

The last duo of pilots stand together but a full arms’ width apart, not talking. No one’s quite sure exactly how the two of them drift since they hate each other with a fiery burning passion, but their neural handshake is one of the strongest on record. Their fighting style is brutal, they tend to tear the darkspawn into chunks by the time they’re done, but they get results, and at the end of the day in a war like this, that’s what matters. They’re physically mismatched too, kind of like Hawke and Fenris are. Meredith is a tall, imposing woman with the definition of resting bitch face. She stands at parade rest, hands behind her back, staring at the Marshall. Next to her, Orsino almost disappears. He’s shorter than Meredith by nearly a foot and slender where she’s broad. His feet shift every so often, and his eyes don’t leave the clock. Hawke hasn’t spent much time with them, either together or separately; they’re both aloof and can really only be seen when it’s time to gather for the pre-drop briefing.

Rutherford frowns when he sees Hawke and Fenris behind the pilots, but he doesn’t say anything. There are much more pressing issues to address than their presence here. He looks at the screens in front of Varric for a moment before turning back to the assembled pilots and control room personnel.

“At 1634 standard time, a new darkspawn signature was detected coming through the rift in the Korcari Wilds. Category 4, the largest on record. It’s also heading straight for Skyhold, so we need to move, now. I want the Gray Warden and the Siren’s Call on the front line. Gallows Child, you’re on the miracle mile. Don’t engage unless you have to. We need you to seal that rift. 

“Play it smart. That goes for all of you.” The Marshall sweeps his gaze around, looking at each pilot in turn. “We’re not here to lose people; we’re here to save them. Now get going! We don’t have all day.’

The pilots salute and file toward the door in the control room that’ll take them to the central elevator for the yard. Hawke and Fenris had taken what amounted to the public lift what feels like ages ago but was, in reality, less than a few hours. When the pilots have left and it’s just the control room staff remaining, Rutherford still ignores them, as though he can make them disappear if he just avoids looking at or thinking about them. Hawke’s not about to let that happen.

He takes the station next to Varric, flipping a few switches and squinting at one of the readouts. Varric usually handles this side of things too, what with how short-staffed the apocalypse is, but he nods at Hawke when he swivels in his chair to do just what Hawke already had and turns back to all the other systems he’s monitoring. If the Marshall sticks true to not letting Fenris pilot with him, working up here wouldn’t be the worst thing Hawke could do. Really, it’s impressive the setup they’ve managed to get for this last stand even if they couldn’t find enough people to fully staff it.

“Jaegers ready to drop,” Bethany calls from the back of the room, and Hawke and Varric flip a few more switches as Varric sends back a verbal confirmation and radios in to each jaeger team, finalizing checks and connecting the pilots’ neural handshakes to the full jaeger body.

“How’d we look?” Hawke asks as they work. It’s nearly effortless to fit in where Varric needs him again; they’d worked together when Hawke stopped piloting, and though the systems have upgraded some since then, they haven’t changed so much that he can’t figure it out.

Varric whistles low and shakes his head. “Gray Warden, you are clear for launch. It was something else, Hawke. Pretty nearly—Siren’s Call, ready to go. Good hunting, ya rogues—gave ol’ Meresino a run for their money.”

Hawke shudders. “Please don’t call them that. That strong, though?”

“Would have gotten there if you’d been able to sort out whatever happened to throw you out of alignment. Bring me back a darkspawn head for my trophy wall, Gallows Child. You’re clear to go. Just ran out of power before you could get there.”

Hawke doesn’t miss the murderous look Rutherford shoots Varric from behind his right shoulder. “Well, too bad we don’t have the time.” 

“Yeah, too bad.”

They watch the jaegers fly out to meet the darkspawn, and Hawke grits his teeth as he reads the display for the monster. It’s huge, nearly half again the size of anything he faced in his piloting days, and still larger than anything he deployed other jaegers against. They’ll need at least the Warden and Siren against this thing; he’d be surprised if the Child wasn’t called up to help. They’d had to send out multiple jaegers against smaller ‘spawn; he’s not looking forward to seeing how this fight goes down, especially not from a control room chair. 

“Me either.” Fenris’s hand rests on his shoulder. “It won’t be pretty.” He looks embarrassed when Hawke and Varric turn to look at him for answering aloud Hawke’s internal thoughts.

“No, it won’t,” Hawke agrees. “I just hope they don’t need help.” 

Rutherford stolidly ignores him, staring out the front window at the yard, empty but for the Fury in her corner. 

“Maker, the size of this thing!” Isabela’s voice comes over the comm. “You know what this reminds me of, Zevran? That time in Denerim when—”

“Focus,” Rutherford cuts in. “Status report.”

“We’re about a klick from engaging,” Riordan says, all business. “Can see the thing from here. It’s massive, sir.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” Isabela protests.

“She and Zevran are brilliant pilots,” Varric whispers to Fenris, “but our poor Marshall doesn’t quite know how to handle them.” Fenris snorts and Varric grins, first at him, then at Rutherford.

“Siren, we’ll take the Warden to its left, pull its attention so you can get behind and surprise it.”

“Oh, darling, that sounds like a plan, and I try my best to avoid those. You do what you’re going to do, and we’ll fit in where it makes sense, okay? That’ll work best for everyone.”

Hawke can mentally hear the sigh Riordan holds back. Both he and Stroud were military men before they joined the jaeger program, and it shows in the way they approach fighting the darkspawn. The Warden wouldn’t have been Hawke’s first choice as a dance partner for the Siren, but he also wouldn’t pair them with the Child, either. Meredith and Orsino don’t play well with others. He and Aveline in their prime, though, would have matched well. He bites his lip and looks from the Fury to Rutherford to Fenris, then expels an angry breath and focuses on the readouts before him.

It’s hard to tell what exactly is going on from up here, dots circling each other really don’t give a comprehensive idea of how the fight is going, and Hawke remembers why he hates the control room. Because however it’s named, the people up here have absolutely no control over what happens out there. He can listen to Riordan and Isabela call out their moves and that gives him some picture, but he can’t see the darkspawn and that’s half of the battle. At least when he’s in the cockpit, he’s got visuals to augment his instruments. As it is now, after several fraught minutes listening to the one-sided clash, when he sees the Siren’s symbol flash and flicker on the screen, there’s not a lot he can do but comm over.

“Siren, what’s going on out there? Got some fluctuations here.”

“Skyhold, this is the Siren. Darkspawn got us pretty good. Warden’s got it occupied so it won’t finish us off, but—” Zevran breaks off in a grunt. “Not sure they can take it alone.”

“Gallows Child to Skyhold. Permission to engage?”

“Hold, Child.” Rutherford’s lips thin and he cups his chin in one hand. “Warden, status.”

“Siren’s right, sir. We can hold it, maybe, but no way we can take it down alone.”

Hawke watches the gears twisting in Rutherford’s head as he stares at the screens. He doesn’t envy his position, the decisions he has to make that could affect the rest of the world, not just the base at Skyhold. The easy choice is to send the Child in to back up the Warden, but if the Child’s needed for something else like the Marshall seemed to indicate in the pre-drop briefing, that’s not really an option anymore. The other choices are to hope the Warden can handle it by themselves or…

“Prep the Fury. Hawke, Fenris…come with me."

Rutherford takes them out the pilots’ door and down the lift to the yard where Hawke can see people scrambling across the Fury’s exoskeleton to get her ready for launch. It’s a beautiful sight, that coordinated chaos that makes launching the largest, most ambitious project Thedas has ever seen possible. The Fury is humming, her engine core already alive and pulsing, just waiting for her pilots to direct her. So fixated is Hawke on his jaeger that he doesn’t notice Rutherford has stopped walking. He only pauses himself because Fenris holds out a hand before turning around.

“I do not trust you,” the Marshall says, wasting no preface. “And I do not trust that the two of you will be able to sort out your alignment issues in a combat situation. You are, however, my only option. Don’t fuck this up.”

Hawke raises his eyebrows and exchanges a look with Fenris. “That’s damn motivational, sir. Mind telling us what the Child’s doing not engaging? What’s so important you’d send out an untested jaeger crew instead of one that’s been proven?” Beside him, Fenris nods silently, and together they fold their arms and cock their heads.

Rutherford looks between the two of them, narrowing his eyes. Finally he growls out a sigh and keeps walking toward the jaeger, waving Hawke and Fenris with him. Once they’re even with him, he shakes his head, keeping his eyes fixed ahead of them.

“The Child is the key to a plan to collapse the rift and seal it. Her capabilities make her uniquely suited to the task and she’s best prepared to carry the necessary cargo, so we can’t risk her or her pilots on a simple darkspawn attack. The others were to serve as a shield wall, but we will have to make do if they cannot be salvaged. We have to deal directly with the rift; there will be nothing left of Thedas if we simply continue to react as the darkspawn come.”

Makes sense, Hawke supposes. The only way to secure the long term survival of anyone in Thedas is to make sure there’s no more threat looming. He’s surprised it’s taken this long, now that he thinks about it, but large organizations have always been slow to understand what’s necessary and get around to doing it. Collapsing that rift is going to be a tall order, and he wonders how they’ve figured to do it. But that’s not really his concern yet. First he and Fenris have to fix their shit. Then they can help fix the world. Assuming they’re still around.

This time when Rutherford stops, Hawke and Fenris stop with him, up against the feet of the Fury. The Marshall rubs his hand through his short-cropped hair then holds it out to Hawke. 

“I hope you succeed, Hawke.”

Hawke takes the Marshall’s offered hand, shaking it once. “Yeah, me too. Thanks.”

After a moment and a pointed look from Hawke, the Marshall shakes Fenris’s hand as well. Hawke salutes, something he hasn’t done in years, and turns on his heel to move the last few feet to the lift that will take them to the Fury and their fate.

They suit up in silence, rushing as best they can through the process, until Hawke stops, one foot up on a bench as he buckles his legs. He rests his hands on his thigh and watches Fenris finish snapping the joints up his arm, moving with clinical efficiency. Fenris pauses, hand still on the final joint, and looks over, frowning at the state of Hawke’s dress.

“Fenris…”

“You saw.” It’s a statement, not a question, and Hawke doesn’t have to ask for clarification to know what he’s talking about. There could really only be one thing in that morass of memories he saw in the drift that Fenris is referring to.

“Yeah.” 

Fenris looks down and away, and Hawke kicks himself, finishing up with his leg and setting it on the floor.

“No, I mean, yeah, I saw. And I still don’t give a shit. You’re acting like I should be reevaluating my opinions and deciding that you’re not the copilot I want. Well…fuckin’ tough. I’m a stubborn old bastard, and nothing I saw in there changed anything about what I said earlier.” Hawke shrugs, as if to say “sorry, not sorry,” and fits the last piece of his suit in place. 

“You’re a different person now. No one who did that would be here and you are, so ergo…” Hawke shrugs again. “I’ll do what I can to get you past it when we’re in the drift, but you’ve gotta help me out. Deal?”

“You do not understand what you’re offering.”

“Sure I do. It’s called a second chance. And besides, if you do end up betraying us, I’ll kill you myself before the Marshall can even think about it. I’m not stupid, Fenris. But everyone deserves to get to try again.”

Hawke brushes nothing off his leg and heads to the door that will take them to the cockpit of the Fury. He turns, gripping the handle as the door swings open, and frowns. Fenris hasn’t moved. Not toward the jaeger anyway. It looks like he wants to run, angled toward where they came in, but he can’t make his feet follow the commands they’ve been issued. They stand there, Hawke letting Fenris have the time to sort through whatever it is going through his head, until finally Fenris looks over and meets Hawke’s eyes.

“Let us go save the world.”

Hawke grins and opens the door wider, bowing and holding it for Fenris. “Fuck yeah.”

This time Hawke feels better prepared for the neural handshake and the memories that come with it. He knows more now about this man in Fenris’s memories and who they were to each other, and he watches those ripples of thought pass him by, not dragging at him the way they had in the trial run. He breathes deep and looks to his right to see Fenris looking back. They reach together to hit the comm switch and with one voice say, “Ferelden Fury, ready to launch.”

“Lookin’ good over there,” Varric says after a moment, sounding hushed in a way Hawke hardly ever hears from him. “Real good, Fury. You’re clear to go. Make them sorry they ever came out of that rift, Hawke.” 

Exiting the base is the worst part of being in a jaeger. It takes, in Hawke’s estimation, way too damn long. But it’s not exactly intelligent to keep your best war machines out in the elements where it’s harder for crews to work on them and anyone can see how bad they get hurt. So he understands why they have to get lifted up and out of the base and then flown outside the defense perimeter, he really does. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t spend the whole time twitching, impatient and anxious to get into the fight. 

His drift connection to Fenris is surprisingly quiet, too, and he has to look over a few times just to make sure he’s there and the last half hour wasn’t something Hawke had imagined. Each time he turns his head, Fenris is watching him too. Neither of them says anything; they just blink at each other and eventually Hawke turns away to stare out the front view screen. There’s really not a lot to say when the person next to you is inside your head. Fenris doesn’t even need to look over to feel Hawke’s anxiety, and Hawke doesn’t have to check to make sure Fenris is still there. Though their connection is hushed, there’s still the drift’s background hum, something he only feels when he’s solidly connected to another pilot. It just reassures him on some level to physically see Fenris while he still can, because as soon as they hit the ground to go after the darkspawn, it’ll be all eyes front.

He watches as they pass the Gallow’s Child, pacing the perimeter they’d been set. Neither of her pilots offer any words of encouragement as the Fury flies on, not that Hawke had expected any. Meredith and Orsino are uptight at the best of times, and being forced to stay back rather than engage the enemy, something every jaeger pilot yearns to do, has to be infuriating. Hawke just hopes they’ll all be alive after this so he can flaunt their success to the experienced team. He wants to see the sour looks on their faces, just for fun.

In no time at all and still entirely too long, the airlift drops them near the darkspawn front. Those pilots wish them good luck and good hunting as they beat it back to the safety of the base, not that Hawke blames them. Helicopters are hardly designed to withstand the beating a jaeger is, and they’re running low on them as it is. He really, really hopes this plan of Rutherford’s works.

The darkspawn and the Gray Warden are still engaged when the Fury gets close enough to truly make out what’s going on. The Warden has lured the monster away from the prone Siren, and Hawke can see one small shape crawling on the outside of her plating. He’s not sure what good that’ll do, since most repairs to a jaeger require a large team of trained specialists, but the Siren’s pilots know better than he does what shape she’s in. Hawke and Fenris change the angle of their approach to be less directly from where the Siren lies, a small precautionary measure in case the darkspawn chooses to investigate where the new target came from; they don’t want it going back to finish her off.

From the drift, Hawke can feel Fenris’s displeasure at walking directly on top of forests and old landmarks, roads and buildings that may have been houses. He understands, but feeds back the certainty that if they spent their time picking their way around everything on the ground, the darkspawn would surely attack that weakness, would go for the buildings rather than the jaegers, would take advantage of their precarious balance as they moved through areas to topple them onto what they meant to protect. Fenris sends an image of abandoned houses, of ghost towns across Thedas, and a darkspawn on the horizon, a picture of the world to come if they fail to stop this incursion, and he and Hawke are united by a freshly stoked conviction that they will never let that world come to pass.

The Fury picks up her pace, barrelling straight for the occupied darkspawn, and the twinges of sadness and guilt from Fenris when they knock down copses of trees fade into the larger landscape of the drift until they’re nothing more than the faintest of ripples.

“Warden!” Hawke calls as they run. “We’re coming in hot! Hold it there!”

They can see, as the jaeger’s footsteps reverberate across southern Ferelden, the darkspawn turn its ugly head in their direction. It surges, trying to break the Warden’s grasp and engage this new target, but the Warden holds it firm, angling it back and out. The Fury leaps to cover the remaining distance and drives a rocket-powered fist into its face. The Warden lets go then, and the momentum from the Fury allows them to drive the darkspawn to the ground. The thing writhes and wriggles as the Fury pins it in the dirt, and that much movement causes their follow up punches to miss as often as they connect. 

“Fury, we’re going to blast it. Get clear on my mark. Three…two…one… _mark._ ”

The Fury jumps back as missiles launch from the Warden’s chest and shoulders, snaking through the air to impact against the darkspawn’s body, tearing chunks of its flesh off. But it’s still standing after that volley, and as the Warden’s plates close again, it dashes for them, wrapping its entire body around the Warden’s frame and biting at the head. The Fury reaches for the darkspawn, finding the missile holes to be excellent hand holds, and yanks at it, attempting to tear the beast free. But it’s holding onto the Warden by its teeth in their head, sinking them farther in as the Fury pulls, and the pained grunts from Riordan and Stroud are enough to convince them to stop that course of action and try another.

Instead of trying to pull it off, they begin to pull it apart. The darkspawn’s hide is riddled with holes yet it’s still alive somehow, and the Fury tears piece after piece from the darkspawn to seemingly no effect. The thing clings to both life and the Warden, and the Fury disengages again to look for anything else they can do.

Hawke’s not sure which one of them the thought originates from, at this point it doesn’t matter, they’re so connected, and he grins back at Fenris for a brief, fierce moment.

“Warden, hold tight. We’re gonna try something a little unorthodox.”

“If it gets this thing off our head, you can do anything.” Riordan’s voice sounds strained, and Hawke grinds his teeth as the Fury circles the Warden, coming around to their back. The darkspawn’s eyes follow them as they move, but it decides in favor of keeping its grip on the Warden rather than attacking the Fury, and that’s all the opening they need.

The Fury steps forward, wraps their arms around the torso of the Warden, and hoists the other jaeger off their feet. Through the comms come surprised shouts from Riordan and Stroud, and Hawke grins as the Fury executes the rest of their plan, suplexing the Warden. They can hear the twin grunts from Riordan and Stroud, and feel more than see or hear the darkspawn go limp.

“Up, up, up!” Hawke calls. “It won’t stay dazed forever!” The Fury pushes the Warden halfway to their feet, igniting their back thrusters to get the two jaegers up before the darkspawn has a chance to reattach to the Warden or get up itself. They both back up a few steps, and the Fury sends a shoulder rocket streaking toward the darkspawn. It impacts in a cloud of orange destruction, yet the darkspawn still rises, flinging itself at the Fury. It sinks all its claws into their right arm, Fenris’s side, and both Hawke and Fenris scream in pain. 

Their arm goes limp, and they each slump forward, glassy eyed and chasing ripples in the pond. It’s a weird dual layer of images, Carver screaming as the darkspawn tears through the Fury’s arm, Fenris screaming as the neural handshake is initiated in that red-tinted jaeger. So many screams. Hawke can hear his own voice echoing in the visions, there and not there in the way things in dreams are both there and not there. The pain is real, though, it’s the realest thing in this world right now, and Hawke tries to grip it, use it to pull himself out of the memory that isn’t his, but his fingers slip and he falls. 

Between the screaming, he hears his name called in a myriad of voices, most of them far away, too far away to reach him. Then, one close by but somehow softer than the rest says his name in question, as though unsure where Hawke is. 

“I’m here,” Hawke says, though he doesn’t know where “here” is, and gropes out with his hands. He can feel the twin storms of his drift with Fenris when he does so, as though they’re a physical manifestation howling around him. He can still see Carver screaming, still see Fenris screaming, still hear broken gasps from his own throat. His right hand bumps up against something else, and his fingers quest out, trying to determine what it is. It grabs back, and Hawke can feel fingers, a hand, a wrist.

“Fenris.” The hand grips his and Hawke squeezes back, and the two of them batter back at the winds of their drift memories pushing them down. They fight back until they make their own eye between the two storms, standing together where the forces collide and, now, break around them. The screaming stops. The red-tinted jaeger is gone; Carver is gone. Fenris remains, breathing heavily at Hawke’s side as his vision returns slowly to the regular world. Their hands are wound together in the center between them, and Hawke gives one last squeeze as the jaeger’s audio filters back in.

“Hawke! Fury! Are you okay? What’s happening out there!” 

“Fury, come in! It’s almost through your arm. Fury, respond!”

With the voices comes the pain, worse now than it had been, and Hawke grits his teeth as the Fury looks over and down at the darkspawn attached to their arm, gnawing at the metal plates and spitting them out when it pulls them off. That’ll be a bitch to repair, but that’s up to the mechanics, not Hawke. All he can do right now is make sure the darkspawn doesn’t do any more damage than it already has. 

From the side, a streak of yellow-orange fire wreathed in smoke, and the darkspawn writhes as a rocket explodes in its eye. The monster loses its grasp on the Fury’s arm and falls to the ground. Hawke looks over to Fenris, raising his eyebrows in question. Fenris nods, and they rush forward at the darkspawn, dropping to one knee on top of the creature to pin it, and use their left arm to punch down with all the force at their disposal into the darkspawn’s rocket-wrecked face four, five, eight times before it goes completely still. And then they send their other shoulder rocket into it, point blank, just to be sure.

When it doesn’t move for another full minute, they climb to their feet and survey the area. The Warden stands close by, and the giant jaeger nods in acknowledgment of the kill. Both Fury and Warden look over to the Siren, still flat on her back, to see the figure who’d been crawling around the outside of the jaeger waving one hand frantically while the other arm clutches what must be a rocket launcher. 

Hawke laughs weakly and hits the comm. “This is the Fury. Darkspawn down. Airlift required for the Siren.” The Fury sways on their feet and drops back to one knee, the sparking circuits in their wrecked arm sending cascading signals up through the pilots. “And maybe us too.”

“You got it, Fury. Sit tight, we got it from here. Good work out there.”

“Thanks, Varric. Feels good.”

Fenris gives Hawke a small smile, and they sit the Fury down to wait for their ride.

* * *

The repairs required to get the Fury back to fighting shape are extensive. It’s faster and more efficient to simply replace the Fury’s arm with another one from a decommissioned jaeger that there aren’t pilots for. And it makes sense: this is war and waiting around to rebuild the Fury’s original arm for aesthetic purposes isn’t smart. The darkspawn are coming out of the rift faster, less time between incursions, and they simply can’t bench one of their only players. But still…

“She looks ugly,” Hawke complains to Fenris as they sit together atop one of the nearby scaffoldings, watching the replacement take place.

Fenris raises one eyebrow and takes a deliberate bite of his food instead of responding.

“It doesn’t match!” Hawke continues, gesturing hard enough at his jaeger that whatever food was on his fork gets flung out into space and down into the yard. Hopefully not onto someone’s head. “It’s big and clunky and—” He breaks off and just waves both arms in the air, still clutching his fork.

“I do not think the darkspawn will care if we…match.”

“The darkspawn are known to have poor taste already. They created that rift in _Ferelden_ , Fenris. That should tell you something.”

Fenris blinks. “Aren’t you Ferelden?”

“Only technically.” Hawke shrugs. “And anyway, I feel like that makes me the perfect authority on my country being shit. Just like you could tell me all about how shit Tevinter is.”

The din of the work in the yard fades away as Fenris freezes, perfectly still. Through the fading sensation of their drift connection, Hawke can feel the ripples of a memory rushing its way to the surface, agitating the waters until the ripples turn to waves turn to a tsunami, crashing down at Fenris. Hawke reaches out, dropping his fork in favor of grabbing Fenris’s hand and squeezing it, creating a patch of ground to stand on as the water breaks around them.

Fenris looks at Hawke, and for a moment Hawke can see the dual layers of reality and drift. He sees Fenris sitting on the scaffolding, his expression blank; he sees Fenris barely able to lift his chin out of the tide of memories swirling around him, his eyes panicked and wide. Hawke lifts his other hand to cup Fenris’s face, brushing his thumb over Fenris’s cheek. After a moment, the dual images flicker and coalesce into one, and Fenris’s eyes focus on Hawke’s, blinking slowly. Hawke offers him a little smile.

“Welcome back.”

Fenris covers Hawke’s hand on his face with his own, leaning briefly into the touch. He closes his eyes, gripping Hawke’s hands to keep him in place a moment before Hawke tries to pull away. So they stay there, hands twined against Fenris’s face and in his lap, their breaths synchronizing.

“Drifting in Tevinter is…not the same as it is here. It is not about partnership; it is about control. One pilot is only there as a catalyst, a battery, another body to hold the jaeger together and keep the other from taking the brunt of the neural load. It is an inglorious role, but a necessary one, or so I once believed. Danarius was… I owed him a great deal, for saving my family when I could not. It was an honor to be chosen as his secondary.”

Hawke has one eyebrow raised and another climbing his forehead when Fenris finally opens his eyes again. But he doesn’t speak and for that, Fenris is grateful. He breathes in through his nose, holding it before exhaling slowly.

“They do not tell you of the excruciating pain that comes with dividing the neural load this way. It is, of course, your fault if you are unable to bear it. That moment you saw, that was the first time I drifted with Danarius. I know you felt that agony. It nearly broke me; I am not fully certain that it did not, given all that I participated in over the next few years. You must understand, Hawke, that the Marshall has good reason to mistrust me. If you knew when we first sparred that I was Tevinter’s Little Wolf, would you have let me on the mat?”

Hawke recoils slightly out of instinct, and Fenris huffs a bitter laugh. The Wolf of Tevinter was known by reputation only down south, as the Tevinter jaeger program had generally kept to itself unless a mutual border was threatened, which didn’t happen often. Though the rift had appeared in Ferelden, the Tevinter were the first with a functioning jaeger…and they never let the rest of the world forget it, either. For the first year or two of the war, they were the ones who fought the most and lost the most, but their jaegers were the fastest and the heaviest hitters, and it seemed they understood that if they stood aside and waited until the darkspawn reached Tevinter, it would already be too late for them to fight back then.

The Wolf of Tevinter was associated with one of the highest kill counts on record, and most of Ferelden and the Marches spoke about him in hushed tones, saying he was half-feral, that his savagery was only held in check by his partner, that it was remarkable Tevinter had let someone like that in their jaeger program, _but, well, you know, they were desperate at the beginning._ But then the Wolf went dark about four years ago…and it all starts to click together in Hawke’s brain. The rest of the world thinks the Wolf dead, and in a manner of speaking, perhaps he is. Hawke can _feel_ through the drift the memories that connect Fenris to the Wolf, knows by tracing them that the two are in fact one and the same. But he can also feel the distance Fenris puts between them and himself, knows unequivocally that the guilt that plagues him would sever the ties if it could.

“How did Bethany find you?”

Fenris blinks. It’s not a question he’d been expecting; of the swirling morass of queries in Hawke’s mind, it had been the bottom rung on the ladder of importance.

“Magic?”

Hawke snorts. “Sounds like my sister. Still not sure how she does…whatever it is she does, but—” He shrugs. “I like the results.

“Look, Fenris, I can’t say I’d have been as accepting of you if I’d known who you were initially. So I’m glad I had no clue because it means I met _you_ , the you that you want to be, not the one everyone assumes you are. The Marshall is living in the past while the rest of us are fighting for the future. I think he’ll join us eventually. And today may have done a lot to push him there.”

“We got knocked out of alignment again.” Fenris’s lips twist to one side. 

“We got ourselves back in.”

Hawke lifts their twined hands from Fenris’s lap and places them against his heart. Up here on the scaffolding, they’re removed from the rest of Skyhold, the hustle and bustle around the jaegers, and against the steady thrum-beat of Hawke’s heart beneath their hands, the drift surges around them. It’s just the after-effect of the neural handshake, but it’s strong. It’s the work of a moment to find the new center of their storms, their peace in the hurricanes. The wonder in Fenris’s eyes as he looks up at Hawke matches the intensity of the feeling rushing through Hawke’s veins as he gazes back.

“It’s nice to meet you, Fenris.”

* * *

According to the darkspawn clock, they still have about a day after the repairs are done on the Fury until the next piece of ugly crawls its way through the rift. Hawke and Fenris spend time sparring in the gym, both against each other, to further investigate and deepen their drift connection, and against the other pilots in a friendly competition. Now that they’ve been in the field, Riordan, Stroud, Zevran, and Isabela are keen to know exactly who they’ll be fighting with, and the best way any of them know to size someone up is a good old-fashioned fist fight. Orsino and Meredith are conspicuous for their absence, but they never did fraternize much with the rest of the pilots anyway. 

Rutherford calls them all for a meeting less than twenty-four hours before the next expected incursion. In the repurposed base of Skyhold, there are only a few rooms large enough to hold the Marshall, all the assembled pilots, a few of the most important control room personnel, and two people Hawke has only seen in passing before. The mess hall is occupied, the yard is too noisy for anyone to hear properly, and the control room is in use 24/7. So they all shove into Rutherford's office, which works well enough as long as most of the furniture is removed and everyone isn’t too picky about the size of their personal space bubble. 

Fenris folds his arms, hunching his shoulders, and Hawke makes sure they’re near the front of the room so he can position himself between Fenris and as many of the assembled people as possible.

The two strangers stand to the side of the Marshall’s desk, both of them fairly tall and willowy, but that’s where the similarities end. The taller one looks more anxious, tucking strands of dirty blond hair behind his ear several times before the meeting starts. He’s dressed in faded and patchwork clothes that speak to a divided mind, where work is more important than wardrobe. His long fingers clutch a small tablet. The other stranger is more put together, wearing a collared shirt and slacks as though this weren’t the end of the world and most people had given up looking fancy, especially on base. He seems calm, surveying the pilots in front of him with a detached curiosity. The smooth, hairless surface of his head dully reflects the lights above.

Once the pilots have quit jostling and ribbing each other for space, the Marshall clears his throat.

“This is it, everyone. The next time that rift opens and spits out a darkspawn, we’re shutting it down. For good. Our scientists,” and he gestures at the two strangers, “have devised a weapon that they believe will cause the rift to destabilize and collapse, sealing the darkspawn off from Thedas. The Gallows Child will carry this device with the rest of the jaegers running interference. No matter what, the Child _must_ reach the rift with the weapon in tact for us to have a chance at this. Dr. Anders Howden is the head of our theoretical physics lab, and Dr. Solas Ouef has logged the most contact hours with the rift to study its structure and composition. They can tell you more.”

Rutherford nods and cedes the floor to the scientists. Anders, the blond with the tablet, presses a few things and projects an image against the wall behind the Marshall’s desk. It looks like the schematics for the Child, but as it rotates, Hawke can see an additional piece has been added to her back. Solas moves closer to the wall to point while he explains.

“The Gallows Child has been equipped with the most scientifically advanced weapon ever to be created in Thedas.” 

Hawke smothers his snort behind a cough, and Fenris elbows him in the side.

“Crews have already installed it to the back plating on the Child, to be detached and deployed upon reaching the rift. Her pilots will receive a more detailed briefing on the procedures, but the execution is simple: release the clamps, aim the weapon, and fire. There are two warheads attached to the Child. One should be sufficient for the task, but the second is there as a failsafe, should something happen to the first. The jaeger’s guidance system has been updated to include the rift’s unique signature in order to target lock the missiles.”

As he speaks, Anders flips more images up to the wall: close ups of the warheads and the clamps that hold them in place on the Child’s back, an animation of the unclamping process, a simulation of the rift closing after a hit from the weapon.

“The warheads are a unique construction,” he says, taking over from Solas, “utilizing both modern technology and the “magic” of ages past, which we understand now to be advanced forms of alchemy that have practical contemporary chemical applications. Based on the information we’ve been able to gather from the rift and data on the darkspawn collected after kills, we are confident that this delivery system is up to the task.”

“How confident?”

Anders looks at Hawke, as though surprised someone has questions, then to Riordan who, on the other wall of Rutherford’s office, has nodded in agreement with Hawke.

“Well, based on our calculations and the simulations we’ve run—”

“How. Confident.”

“Eighty-five percent?”

Hawke raises his eyebrows and looks at the Marshall, against the wall and fighting for a calm he seems destined to lose. Rutherford pinches the bridge of his nose as Hawke simply watches him without saying anything, then shakes his head and approaches his desk again.

“And how confident are any of you that you can take down the next darkspawn out of that rift without losing a jaeger? How confident are you that you can give our scientists another…how long, doctor?”

Anders looks up at the ceiling, mental calculations flying behind his eyes. “To truly fine tune the system and get above ninety percent? Optimistically? Six months. Realistically, a year or two.”

“So that’s six months to two years of these four jaegers, these eight pilots, and a growing number of darkspawn that are increasing in strength. We have no more jaegers, no more pilots. If we lose any one of them, or any one of you, then we’re down a crew and that makes this attempt that much harder.”

Rutherford stands in front of his desk, hands clasped behind his back, staring down each and every one of them. “It’s not a guaranteed shot, you’re right. It might cost the lives of each jaeger and her crew. It might not even work. But that’s what you signed up for when you entered the program and became a pilot: the chance to die protecting the rest of Thedas. Now, if that isn’t a risk you’re willing to take anymore, then get the hell off my base and let the rest of us try to save the world without you.”

A hush falls over the pilots. Hawke licks his teeth and stares at the floor rather than meet the Marshall’s eyes. It _is_ what he signed up to do, he just didn’t really think the time would come. Sure he’d stepped into his jaeger every time with the theoretical knowledge that this darkspawn could be the one to take him out, but it never happened and somewhere along the line, being on the edge of death lost its threat. Now, faced with it again, confronted in a way he hasn’t been before, Hawke wavers. He has people he loves, people he wants to live with, be happy with, grow old with, and getting into the Fury next is potentially a suicide mission. A noble end, but an end nonetheless. 

He looks to the back of the room where his sister stands with Varric and the few other control room personnel invited to the briefing. She locks eyes with him, and Hawke can see the anguish in her eyes, can nearly feel from here the way she shakes with barely suppressed fear. To lose both her brothers to darkspawn, to watch from the control room as it all happens, to be alone after it all… Bethany’s lips tighten and she closes her eyes for a brief moment before nodding at him, her eyes bright and shining and defiant when she opens them again.

He turns back to Fenris then, to find calm, green eyes staring up at him and a tattoo-lined hand reaching for his. He lifts his hand to meet Fenris’s and watches as Fenris brings their hands to his heart, holding them there as surely as his eyes hold Hawke’s. Underneath his hand, Hawke can feel Fenris’s heartbeat, slow and steady. Measured. Unconcerned. Hawke furrows his eyebrows, and Fenris smiles and shrugs. Their drift flows around them, buoying Hawke instead of dragging him under, and he huffs a laugh and shrugs back. The lines around Fenris’s eyes wrinkle as he smiles again, but though Fenris shifts to face the front of the room again and drops their hands from his chest, he does not let go of Hawke’s fingers. Hawke squeezes lightly and is rewarded by an answering squeeze.

When he surveys the room again, no one has moved. Or, rather, no one has left the room. Most of the pilots are standing closer together, as he and Fenris are, and even the desk jockeys from the control room have closed ranks. They’re all looking back at the Marshall, as if daring him to doubt their resolve again. Rutherford looks a little relieved and so, so proud before he shunts it all aside and scowls at them.

“That’s what I thought. Now if we’re quite finished with all of that, we’ve got a world to protect. My apologies, Doctor Howden. Please finish your presentation.”

Anders blinks several times, his eyebrows falling back down his forehead from the height they’d climbed to during the Marshall’s lecture. “Right. Right… So the warheads function on a different level than anything we’ve used before. It’s got the wrappings of a traditional weapon with the inner workings a wizard would be proud of…”

Half an hour, some domestic scientist squabbling, and a bunch more images displayed on the wall later, the darkspawn siren sounds, freezing Solas mid-sentence. And then Varric from the back of the room puts a hand in the air to keep everyone still for a minute while he listens to something on his radio. He pales.

“Marshall, it’s… It’s a double event.”

Silence in the office.

“Pilots! To your jaegers!” Rutherford yells, coming forward and waving his arms. “Everyone else, to your stations! Let’s move, people; this is it! I don’t care if there’s two of them; we’ll send ’em both to hell!”

The occupants of the office stream out, rushing off to where they need to be. Hawke drops Fenris’s hand and rushes to Bethany first.

He hugs her close as the siren wails above his head, holds her hands and kisses her forehead, nearly letting her go before pulling her back in for another hug. He’s terrified but doing his best to not show it; she doesn’t need his anxiety on top of her own. Pretty soon the room is empty around them, yet Hawke still can’t let go.

“Watch my back?” he asks, offering the hints of a smile.

“No matter how far,” she answers, and they embrace one last time before parting to go their separate ways.

The race to get suited up and into their jaeger is a silent one. Hawke occasionally catches Fenris’s eye and they share a grim look, but neither of them speaks. There’s nothing to be said. Pre-flight checks are done with one-word questions and answers, and even Varric in the control room sounds uncharacteristically subdued when he authorizes their launch. And then they’re flown out toward the rift, the Fury, Siren, and Warden out front as the Child launches a few moments later, behind the protective barrier of the other three jaegers. 

There’s a minute of half-hearted strategy talk between the three forward jaegers, then they all fall quiet, watching their instruments as the rift gets closer and closer. Eventually they come close enough to the darkspawn signatures for them to appear on the sensors, and Hawke can’t help but let out a low whistle. The size on them is far larger than anything Hawke ever faced while he was a pilot and larger still than the darkspawn they faced a few days ago. 

“Fuck,” Isabela says over the comms. 

Beside Hawke, Fenris hums in agreement.

“One minute to drop.” Bethany’s voice comes through clear as a bell, and Hawke, not for the first time, admires the amount of steel that infuses his little sister at the same time as he hates that she has to employ it. 

He reaches out to Fenris through the waves of their drift and finds Fenris reaching back. They stand shoulder to shoulder and watch the tides pulling at them, the persistent memories that demand their attention, and they guide each other through them, offering the fury of their own storm to combat the force of the other. In time, they come to the new forged center of their hurricanes, grim and stony and ready to fight.

The Fury lands, their feet sinking deep into the earth, and strides toward the darkspawn. The Siren and Warden fall behind and to either side of them, and the thunderous crash of their legs hitting the ground in unison sends tremors through the world and up into Hawke’s heart. The excitement that preludes a battle courses through him, and he feels an answering surge from Fenris through their connection. This might be their last battle, they both know it, but the only regret Hawke can feel in the drift is that they didn’t have more time together. They’re still together, though, for what it’s worth, and right now it’s worth everything.

Hawke reaches out to hit the comms. “So…do we have a plan?”

“Fuck up the darkspawn,” Isabela says.

“Keep them off the Child,” Zevran says a beat later.

“Try to engage both ’spawn, Fury,” says Riordan. “You’re tougher, can take more hits. We can flank with the Siren, try to get them while they’re distracted.”

“Thank you, Warden.” Fenris smiles. “Follow our lead.”

The idea Hawke feels floating toward him spreads a slow grin across his face, and he chuckles as the Fury picks up their pace, running full tilt toward the darkspawn. Both targets turn and twist toward the Fury when they come close enough, hissing and spitting at this obvious enemy in their territory. The Fury doesn’t stop its forward momentum when it reaches the darkspawn, just reaches out with both arms to grab at any piece of darkspawn and yanks the two beasts toward each other.

It doesn’t daze them near as much as would have been truly preferable, but combat with the darkspawn is never anything less than a masterclass in improvisation. They reverse grip on the ’spawn in their right hand and use their thrusters to assist in kneeling down quick and hard, slamming its head into the ground. It topples and writhes, and as it’s held down, the Siren’s double blades come in to slash at its unprotected back. The thing thrashes so hard it throws both the Fury and the Siren off, standing and swinging its massive head between the two jaegers, as though assessing which it should attack.

The Fury makes up its mind for it, sending a couple shoulder rockets in to detonate along its belly, and the darkspawn charges back in at them, attacking the last thing to damage it. As soon as it’s back within range, the Fury hooks their hand into the creature’s jaw, holding on tight.

On their left, the Warden charges for the other darkspawn, slamming their left arm into the darkspawn, bashing it with the shield plates that line their arm. The Warden looks like it should be the tank, the way it’s armed: their favored weapon is a greatsword that springs from their right arm in separate pieces, held together by some sort of forcefield that allows it to bend and flex to stab into darkspawn from unexpected angles, and their left arm is fully three times the size of any other jaeger’s arm thanks to the heavy plates that spread out to form an elongated diamond shape. The Warden is a defensive jaeger, never meant to be a frontline fighter, but they’ve all had to do things in this war they weren’t initially prepared to do.

The Warden’s sword stabs into the darkspawn and hooks around within its body, effectively anchoring the darkspawn to the Warden unless it wants to tear out a large chunk of its body to escape. The Fury grips tighter to both darkspawn as the Siren and the Warden beat and slash at the creatures, slowly whittling them down.

“Child!” Hawke yells, his arms shaking from the strain of keeping two darkspawn contained. “Now’s your best shot at the rift, so you better goddamn take it!”

He can see the blip on his sensors that indicates the Child’s position pick up speed, juking out from behind the screen of the other jaegers as it runs for the rift. This better fucking work, but he has no time to think about that right now as the darkspawn impaled by the Warden picks up its terrible clawed hind feet and sinks them into the Fury’s left thigh, ripping past the protective plates to strike at the vulnerable cables and wiring running through the Fury’s core. 

Hawke screams as his own leg buckles beneath him, grunting as he forces himself to stand on it anyway, keeping the Fury upright though unstable. The Warden’s shield arm strikes in at the darkspawn’s legs, forcing it to detach from the Fury or lose its limbs to the jagged edge of the shield. Somehow the Fury has kept hold of the darkspawn through that, and Hawke headbutts it in retribution. Through the drift, he can feel Fenris’s amusement at that move layered underneath his concern for Hawke’s injury. Hawke pushes back as much reassurance as he can when the failing circuits in the Fury’s nearly ruined leg are sending spasms of pain up the biofeedback loop that lets them control the jaeger in the first place. He knows Fenris can feel it too, connected as they are, but he still doesn’t want him to worry. That’s a good way to slip out of alignment.

The Child’s marker has disappeared from the sensors when he looks, and since he didn’t hear screaming from Meredith or Orsino, he’s going to assume that’s a good thing and they’re still on their way to the rift. Once again he drops the other jaeger from his mind in favor of focusing on the present moment, where he has not just one but two darkspawn attempting to rip him and Fenris to shreds, and succeeding, to various degrees.

The Fury wasn’t built to be a hand-to-hand combatant but that was the way Hawke preferred to fight, and over the years when he and Aveline piloted together, the techs on base slowly modified the giant jaeger to complement his fighting style. There are some ranged weapons on board, there have to be when you’re fighting darkspawn, but most of her kit is designed for close quarters combat. Which is a real good thing right now, as Hawke doesn’t think he’s ever been closer to a darkspawn in his life.

“Fenris,” he says.

“Wrist blade,” Fenris answers, and the Fury’s right hand bends ninety degrees to allow a short, wickedly serrated blade to emerge, punching up and into the darkspawn’s throat. It gurgles and jerks erratically, trying to get away from the Fury and only succeeding in ripping the wound in its neck larger. If things keep on like this, Hawke feels confident they’ll be able to finish off these darkspawn before too long, and then the Child will have nothing to worry about.

“Skyhold, we may have an issue.” Meredith’s tone is clear and precise, with nothing in it to indicate just how big an issue the Child might be facing. Her next words clear that right up, however: “There’s another darkspawn in the rift.”

Everyone talks over each other for the next three seconds:

“What do you mean ‘another darkspawn in the rift’?”

“ _Venhedis._ ”

“How the _fuck_ is there another darkspawn??”

“My sensors don’t see anything!”

“Skyhold, please confirm.”

“Silence!” A hush falls on the comms, and then Rutherford continues. “This changes nothing about the mission: we still need that rift closed, and the Gallows Child has to do it. Fury, can you disengage to assist?”

Hawke snorts a laugh. “Negative, Skyhold. Darkspawn tricked out one of our legs; we’re going nowhere fast.” 

"We could," Zevran says. "The Siren is in position to disengage. Warden and Fury can hold these two beasties, yes?”

It’s possible, Hawke concedes: the darkspawn the Siren has been working on looks nearly wrecked, and the more it struggles against the blade the Fury has jammed in its throat, the closer it gets to dying. The fact that the Fury only has one good leg at this point barely factors into Hawke’s calculations. The Warden’s there on that side to assist them; right now, the Child needs more help than they do.

“Yes, go!” he shouts. “We’ll wrap this up quicker without your dumb ass anyway.”

Isabela’s merry laughter, only slightly dampened by the very real terror of a third darkspawn in the rift, echoes through the comms as she and Zevran lift their blades out of the darkspawn and turn to sprint toward the Child and their only hope of salvation as fast as their giant metal legs will take them.

The darkspawn tries to follow, but the Fury rotates their fist and curves it down the darkspawn’s body, cutting it open from throat to midsection. The monster thrashes, spilling what passes for blood and guts all over the Fury’s arm and the ground below, and Hawke can sense Fenris’s certainty that it won’t be long for this world. The second darkspawn seems to come to the same conclusion and writhes harder in the Fury’s grip, nearly breaking their hold.

“Warden!” Hawke calls in warning. He barely gets the name out before the darkspawn wrenches itself out of the Fury’s hold, tearing a chunk out of its own shoulder with the force of its movement. It’s still attached to the Warden by their greatsword, but it doesn’t look like the darkspawn cares about that very much as it kicks up its back legs to scratch and tear at the Warden’s leg plating while diving in with its jaws to savage at the Warden’s head. 

The Warden takes a step backward to stabilize themself against the attack and buckles; the darkspawn took out enough of their legs to render them nearly useless, and the jaeger falls to the ground with a thunderous crash. In an instant, the darkspawn capitalizes on the Warden's less defensible position and begins ripping at any plating it can hook its claws into in an attempt to get through to the pilots inside. Its movements are frenzied, the Warden's blade through its chest driving it mad, and it gives no thought to the damage it takes as it pries great chunks of armor off the downed jaeger.

Screams of pain are the only comm chatter now, as Stroud and Riordan experience their left arm nearly torn off and their body disemboweled. 

The Fury pivots, shaking the darkspawn off their wrist blade so they can skewer the one wrecking the Warden. With the momentum from their swing, they attempt to drive the darkspawn off the Warden, but the thing is so attached to the Warden's body that all they manage to do is cut out a large section of the back of the darkspawn's neck. That's enough, though, and the darkspawn coughs a gob of brown, semi-coagulated blood onto the Warden's face, its movements slowing until it finally stills.

The Fury turns to look back at the first darkspawn, readying their shoulder rockets, but the nearly bisected creature lies unmoving on the ground. Hawke can hear a relieved little huff of a sigh from Fenris, and he feels the same. Without the darkspawn to handle in the immediate present, the pain from the Fury's smashed leg filters back into Hawke's awareness, and it's only thanks to Fenris's assistance that the Fury kneels carefully on the ground rather than collapsing.

“Warden,” Hawke rasps, bracing one arm on the center console, “you okay?”

“We’re not going anywhere, that’s for sure.” Stroud sounds like he’s forcing cheer into his voice. “Riordan is down, and the Warden’s unresponsive; ’spawn must have clawed out the control wiring." 

Hawke curses and checks his instruments for the Siren and the Child, even though he knows they're out of range. With the Warden downed and the Fury one poor decision from joining them, everything rides on the two remaining jaegers. Hawke can feel Fenris reaching out to him through the steady waves of their drift, a solid presence for him to lean on.

"Child," Hawke calls. "How's it looking?"

No immediate response comes through, and Hawke desperately hopes it's simply because they're concentrating on fighting a darkspawn and not for any darker reason. Still, he's uneasy, and though Fenris sighs in disapproval, he helps Hawke hoist the Fury to standing again. They half drag their ruined leg as they walk, making their slow way toward the rift.

"Fury! What are you doing!" 

Hawke doesn't answer, too focused on compartmentalizing the pain of their leg from everything else so that it doesn't overwhelm their drift and render them completely useless. 

"Stand by," Fenris says. He understands exactly why Hawke feels he has to do this; whether or not he agrees isn't germane to the situation as it stands. If he doesn't support Hawke, they both go down.

"Skyhold, Siren." Isabela's words are clipped, and the thrill of fear that runs Hawke's spine nearly collapses the walls he's built around the Fury's leg. "Shit's fucked. ’Spawn's huge, Child got hit. We're—" she gasps, then tries to laugh, "doing our best but—"

"We're on our way!" Hawke bellows at the comms, and the Fury increases their pace. As fast as they can move without tearing the busted leg off themselves and it still doesn't feel fast enough.

Finally the sensors register another jaeger, and Hawke has a moment to wonder why it's alone before the next dots appear and the vitals on the darkspawn display. Fenris swears quietly in Tevene, and Hawke wholeheartedly agrees, even though he doesn't speak a lick of Tevene.

The darkspawn is massive, easily twice as big as the two they just took out. Hawke doesn't think they have a size category for something this large. For all the Siren has been working at it, the thing still seems to be relatively vital. As they get closer, he can see the Siren dancing around the darkspawn, slashing relentlessly at it with their blades. The Child has backed away, watching from a safer distance, though they are still launching every single rocket in their payload at the creature.

The Child looks to have taken a swipe across their back and side; the weapon strapped to their back has a few deep cuts through it. If it doesn't work anymore they're all screwed, so it has to work: there's no other option. Hawke isn't sure how they can help with the condition they're in, but they have to try and pray they don't get in the way. 

"Distract it," Meredith commands as the last of the Child's rockets streak past the Fury's view screen. "Buy us time to get past it and into the rift."

"Copy that." The Fury keeps limping, slowly but surely closing with the Siren and that monstrous excuse for a darkspawn. Behind them, the Child keeps pace, waiting for their moment.

As they get closer, Hawke can see deep damage on the Siren too, identical marks to the ones the Child has, though more numerous. They haven't been fighting the darkspawn for that long, but the thing has still managed to hurt both jaegers in significant ways. There's no way the Siren could handle this ’spawn for much longer by themselves, and even with the Fury's additional might, their chances still look low. Still. They have to do this.

The Fury launches a few rockets as they walk, planting their good leg as securely as they can when each rocket fires so they don't topple. That gains them the darkspawn's attention for a few seconds, and Hawke gets the distinct, uncomfortable impression that they're being evaluated, judged, and ultimately dismissed when it turns back to the Siren. Its giant clawed hands rake out toward a few pieces of loose plating low on the Siren's torso, and though the jaeger pivots to dodge, they're just a little too slow and it connects. Rather than tear at the jaeger and the pilots inside, the darkspawn lifts the Siren up and hurls them at the Fury.

Perhaps under better conditions they would have been able to sidestep or duck, but the Fury is barely hanging on as it is and they take the full weight of the Siren to their chest. Both of them tumble to the ground, and Hawke's mind is suddenly fire, the turbulent waves of his drift with Fenris nearly evaporated by the shock. He can hear screaming and not all of it is his. He reaches out for Fenris, unsure what’s real and what’s the drift and unable to see through the mist that springs up around them. A hand meets his, and he clings to it; even if it isn’t real, it’s all he has right now. He calls for Fenris, yelling his partner’s name in the same breath as he chokes on a scream of pain, searching for the one person who can help him refind his equilibrium.

It’s a whisper that snaps him back to center, slipping through the mist to steady him. Just a brush of wind against his cheek that then swirls around him, clearing out the area and allowing the waves back in. This Hawke knows how to handle, as he’s buffeted by the returning tides and winds of his drift with Fenris, and he sinks into the place he knows, the intersection where their hurricanes meet. He’s used to the lashing storms, and he uses them to buoy him and his leg. A moment later, Fenris joins him, and when Hawke looks down at their joined hands, he’s not surprised to realize he’s been holding onto Fenris this entire time.

Fenris smiles, soft but tense, and Hawke nods. They have to get up.

Pushing through together is easy; they can do anything together, Hawke thinks. The alarms and warning sirens in their cockpit are going haywire when they surface to consciousness, and the first thing Hawke does is slap them silent. It doesn’t matter what’s wrong with the Fury; all that matters is getting the Child to the rift. The Siren rolled off the Fury with the force of the darkspawn’s toss, which is good news for the Fury but sounds bad for the Siren if the one aborted groan from their comm is any indication.

They spent only a few seconds out of commission, it looks like, based on the positions of the darkspawn and the Child on their sensors; it’ll take them longer to get to standing, and they watch the situation unfold in front of them as they begin the slow, painful process.

Without any other jaegers as a shield, the Child is alone on the field against the massive darkspawn. It’s already struck them once and looks as eager as a giant monster could at the prospect of finishing them off. The Child, for their part, looks as calm as anything, continuing their steady walk toward the darkspawn and the rift. 

With two swift movements, the Child extends the large blade they keep tucked up one arm and runs their other hand along the sword’s edge. When the chemicals that coat the sword meet the ones secreted from the vents that run along the palm of the jaeger’s hand, the blade erupts in flame.

“Shit, that’s so fucking cool,” Hawke mutters.

Flaming sword in hand, the Child approaches the darkspawn. The darkspawn crouches, waiting, and Hawke has the terrible feeling that this one is more intelligent than the rest. The Child leaps the final few hundred feet separating them from the darkspawn, sword raised to come down in a strike across the darkspawn’s body, but the darkspawn parries with its claws, ignoring the flames that lick up past the claws to take hold in the creature’s hands and wrist. The Child swings again and again to similar effect, not making much of a dent in the way of taking the creature down, but Hawke can see their plan: slowly, nearly invisibly, the Child is switching positions with the darkspawn, placing themself in closer proximity to the rift as the darkspawn gets farther away. It’s terribly clever, and it would have had a better chance at working against any other darkspawn.

This one wises up to the plot before the Child has made more than a quarter rotation and on the Child’s next swing, it allows the sword to bite into its shoulder as it jams its own arm through the Child’s plating and deep into their guts. The comms are silent for ten heartstopping seconds.

“Fury.” Orsino’s voice. “Get us into the rift.”

“Doesn’t matter how,” Meredith coughs.

Fenris offers a suggestion through their shared consciousness, and Hawke nods. “On our way,” he says.

They stop trying to stand up and instead prepare their wrist blades and fire their propulsion rockets. It’s somehow both less and more bearable to not have any weight on their broken leg as they fly low across the ground toward the Child. They impact the darkspawn first and shove their left wrist blade up and into the thing’s body before doing the same thing to the Child. It feels wrong to injure another jaeger but this is their only shot at closing this rift, and if Hawke read Orsino and Meredith’s tones right, they weren’t planning on coming back anyway.

Hawke and Fenris press their arms together, pinning the Child and the darkspawn to each other, and they keep going, using their propulsion rockets as long as they possibly can, streaking all three of them closer to the rift. Hawke can feel the certainty when it enters Fenris’s mind, knows the exact second he accepts that they’re not making it out either.

The mission is more important than either of them and they both know it. They’re through with regrets; settled into their drift, they know that at least they’ll go down together and there’s a peace in that.

The darkspawn wriggles in their grasp, attempting to break free of the two blades stuck into its body and its own grip on the Child, but neither jaeger will be moved, though it's a vicious fight merely to retain the holds they already have.

And then they crest the rift. The sensors register nothing but empty space plus the blips for the Child and the darkspawn. What Hawke sees with his eyes is completely different: All around them is a crackling golden energy that spits shadow-tinted lightning bolts from point to point, seemingly at random. There's a city in the distance and atop one of the buildings, a tall, sickly thin figure stands, arms spread. Darkspawn float in this space, as gravity doesn't pull on them the same way it does on the other side of the rift. The jaegers float too, caught off guard by the sudden shift, and the darkspawn they'd pushed through with uses the moment to wrench free from them.

"Fury, we're arming the charges now. Get out of here."

"Love to, but…" The Fury's propulsion rockets sputter and go out. "Don't sweat it, Child. We did what we needed to."

"Copy that. Detonation in ten. Nine."

Hawke tunes the countdown out, instead reaching for Fenris's hand in the cockpit of their jaeger. They did it. They got the Child where they needed to go and the rest of the world will be safe now, thanks in part to them. That's what matters.

He watches the explosion balloon out of the Child, emerging like some parasitic growth from the apparatus on their back. The shockwave ripples out, interrupting the shadow-gold lightning as it goes, turning the bolts back on themselves and into the darkspawn around them. Hawke imagines he might hear screams if he could hear anything outside their contained little jaeger world.

The shockwave hits them too, frying the Fury's sensors and controls and sending a cascading stream of little shocks from his toes to his head. This is it, he thinks, and smiles. They did it. Nothing else matters. Bethany. Varric. The Marshall. Hawke watches their faces as they appear in front of him and then dissolve. Nothing else matters. His own vision grays, then blacks out shortly after.

* * *

"Don't tell him right when he wakes up; it'll just upset him, and he doesn't need that."

"I can't withhold it from him, either. He'll know, anyway."

“No, you’re right, I just—”

There's too much light around him compared to the dark world he'd been inhabiting and he tries to squint his eyes against the glare, but his eyes are already closed and he accomplishes nothing. He grumbles to himself and tries to at least move his head away from all the light, but that doesn't work either. A hand touches his shoulder.

"Good morning, brother."

Bethany's voice, not Carver's. He'd been expecting to see his brother, presuming there was anything in the afterlife, and he opens his confused eyes to see the tired, smiling face of his sister.

"The fuck?"

From behind Bethany, Hawke can hear Fenris's dry, raspy chuckling, though he can't see him at all from where he lies on what looks like a bed in Skyhold’s medical clinic.

"I regret to inform you that we live yet."

"How?"

"I managed to pull you into the life pod and launch it before I fully passed out myself. I believe we rode the shockwave from the Child out of the rift. Bethany says they picked us up several hours later, once they salvaged the Siren and Warden and saved those pilots. Well…" 

Fenris trails off, and Hawke stares at Bethany for explanation.

"Riordan…didn't make it. The injuries he sustained in the fight were too much. Stroud is alive, though he's experiencing some sympathetic injuries that may never fully leave him. It's a traumatic thing, having your copilot die while you're still connected."

Hawke summons the mental effort required to move his hand over and gesture for Bethany's. She takes his hand and squeezes it.

"But Isabela and Zevran are okay, or they will be after they rest. They keep trying to jailbreak though."

Hawke snorts, as does Fenris. "Sounds like them." He closes his eyes again. "What about us?"

"Well," Bethany says slowly, "you're alive, so that's exciting and very, very good. And, bonus, you're likely to stay alive for a long time because the rift is sealed."

"But?"

Bethany takes a deep breath. "But the damage to the Fury's leg was extensive and you kept pushing yourself to use it… They have to do some more tests now that you're awake, of course, but unless you get feeling back in a day or two, they'll have to amputate it.”

Hawke nods, a heavy numbness tingling down his spine. “What about you, Fenris? How are you?”

He feels a small wave of reassurance lap at his mind and smiles.

“I am fine, Hawke. I simply have pains that will not yet go away.”

“Leg?”

“…Yes.”

“Fuck. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. We saved the world. That is worth it.”

“Right… Now what’s this about something you’re not supposed to tell me?”

Bethany bites her lip and refuses to meet Hawke’s eyes. Through their residual drift connection, Fenris supplies an image of the Fury surrounded by darkspawn and no rift in sight.

“We lost my goddamn jaeger??!”

* * *

A memorial for Meredith, Orsino, and Riordan is erected within Skyhold, right outside the control center. It’s a sobering reminder for everyone on the base that while the long terror of the darkspawn might be over, the cost was higher than any of them wanted to pay. Piece by piece over the next year when it becomes clear the rift is closed for good, the base is deconstructed, parts and personnel going back to what their lives had been before this years-long nightmare. Hawke helps where he can, but no one lets him carry anything fragile for a while: the adjustment period to his artificial limb is longer and more difficult than he wants it to be and even after months of practice he still trips on air sometimes or misjudges the depth of stairs. Fenris is always by his side, though, supporting him when he falls and forcing him to keep working at it. They make an interesting sight striding through the base, Hawke with his one obviously not-flesh leg and Fenris with his limp. As time goes by, the limp is getting less noticeable but it’s still there, and they both favor their left side after that final fight. Hawke’s not sure what he’ll do once the base is fully nonfunctional and they have to leave, but every time his thoughts stray down this track, he finds himself looking to Fenris who smiles at him and calms his worries.

Bethany gets a job as a civilian doing high-level logistics for a worldwide firm, and Hawke couldn’t be more proud. Isabela and Zevran go back to Denerim to do…whatever it is they’re going to do. He asked but couldn’t decipher their reply and figures it might be better if he doesn’t know; he’s not entirely sure they weren’t criminals before joining the jaeger program. Stroud goes back to the military as a strategic advisor, and Hawke maybe misses him most for a while; he, Stroud, and Fenris had been physical therapy buddies for months as they all worked in their separate ways to integrate their trauma and move forward. Rutherford retires and refuses to tell anyone where he’s retiring to. A smart move, Varric says as he grins, though it won’t help him at all because Varric’s heading back to the intelligence community and he’ll be able to find anyone he damn well pleases.

In the end, Hawke and Fenris simply pick a random place on the map (after blacking out Tevinter as a possibility) and move. They pick up whatever jobs will take them and rent a place on the edges of town. Fenris finds himself wrapped up in the local youth mentorship program where he works with kids from all kinds of backgrounds who need a little extra help. He’s shyly proud of the work he does there, and the kids love his tattoos. Hawke joins a martial arts gym and nearly quits immediately when his body’s responses don’t match what he’s trying to tell it to do. But he’s stubborn and sticks with it anyway because if darkspawn couldn’t kick his ass, nothing will. He loses a few championships and wins a couple others and finally settles into a coaching role at the gym. Bethany visits every so often, at holidays and birthdays; they take vacations and talk about the future. And then they live it, their future, one day at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this! I certainly had an inordinate amount of fun writing it ^_^ Comments and kudos are highly encouraged and welcomed; every email notification adds a year to my life and I'm angling to live forever so
> 
> If you want more shenanigans, I'm on [twitter](http://twitter.com/stitchcasual) and [tumblr](http://stitchcasual.tumblr.com)! Come say hi!


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